Everything You Need to Know About Emojicon

In 2016, there’s pretty much no point in eating a food, doing an activity, or even having a feeling unless you’re able to express it using an emoji. Sure, you could tell your friend you went on a bike ride with your new fling and then had shower sex, but why use words when you could just text: 🚴🛁🍆🍑🚿😋?

Yeah, actual words are so 2015. So it only makes sense that now there’s Emojicon, a convention in San Francisco dedicated to 🎊 🎉 everything emoji.

The idea for the convention came from Jeanne Brooks, an ecosystems architect, and Jennifer 8. Lee and Yiying Lu, a journalist and a designer, respectively, who proposed and illustrated the dumpling emoji and also created a grassroots campaign called Emojination to help other people also 📝(craft emoji proposals).

The purpose of the convention is to celebrate 😝 “face with stuck-out tongue and tightly-closed eyes,” 💩“pile of poo,” 💋“kiss mark,” and all of your other favorite emojis while also raising awareness about the Unicode Consortium, the group that oversees emoji approvals and implementation, and the submission process. Still, even if you don’t have a great idea for a new emoji (white wine and vomiting face, anyone?), you can still go to the convention just to 🍕, 🙋, 🎥 , and 🙌.

There will be lots of panels and workshops with topics like “Emoji & the Gender Debate,” “The Big Mistakes Brands Make with Emojis,” and “Do You Have Emoji Intelligence?” You can also expect notable speakers, including the founder of Emojipedia, members of the Unicode Emoji Subcommittee, and emoji designers. There will also be emoji art galleries, an emoji hackathon, an emoji film festival, and an opening night party where the only food being served will be foods that are also emojis... including from Taco Bell’s emoji taco truck. Of course.

Emojicon goes down this weekend, Nov 4th-6th, at Bespoke at Westfield Mall in San Francisco. It all kicks off with an opening party on Friday. Go dressed as your favorite emoji (there will be prizes), get an emoji caricature done, and take pictures in an emoji photo booth. Tickets range from $10 to $500 and are still available. 👍

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Daisy Barringer is a freelance writer in San Francisco who was so lost before the taco and Champagne emojis. Follow her on Twitter @daisy.